Dune: Prophecy wasted relatively little time setting itself apart from the movies. In the season one premiere of the Dune prequel series, a war is violently declared by the killing of likely the youngest person ever murdered onscreen in director Denis Villeneuve’s Dune universe.
Set over 10,000 years prior to the events of the films, Dune: Prophecy is largely focused on the invisible influence of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood under the ruling of Mother Superior Valya Harkonnen (Emily Watson). The first episode, aptly titled “Hidden Hand,” shows the murderous origins of the Bene Gesserit, and their plans to arrange the right unions of families to keep the sisterhood in power. At the time, House Corrino are the ruling family of the Imperium after defeating the thinking machines feared to one day enslave mankind. Through silent communications and duplicitous advisory to Emperor Javicco Corrino (played with an unflappable stoicism by The Penguin’s Mark Strong) from his Truthsayer and confidant Kasha (Jihae), we see how the hidden hand of the Bene Gesserit moves the pieces on the chess board how it wishes, to deadly results.
Every event in the Dune films takes place during wartime. Walking like a regular person on Arrakis dunes can get you devoured by a sandworm in moments, and a simple counter-suggestion to the terrifyingly hairless Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen (Austin Butler) can get your throat slit quicker than you can finish their sentence. Brutality has always been used in the films as a way to never let the audience forget the life-or-death stakes at play. Dune: Prophecy takes that to a level we’ve never seen in the films.
Desmond Hart and Pruwet Richese establish the stakes in Dune: Prophecy
Poor little Pruwet. All he wanted to do was play with his absolutely adorable, potentially homicidal AI-controlled lizard. As the nine-year-old Richese heir, he’s used as a pawn in the strategic union between his family and the imperial House Corrino. Emperor Corrino needs the Richese’s fleet of ships to protect his spice operation on Arrakis from the Fremen, and the duplicitous Duke Ferdinand Richese (Brendan Cowell) wants influential proximity to the Great Houses, so a marriage is arranged between pre-teen Pruwet and fully grown Princess Ynez (Sarah-Sofie Boussnina) to unite the families, with the surreptitious help of the Bene Gesserit.
Unfortunately for Pruwet, he becomes a sacrifice in an invisible war that soldier Desmond Hart implies is being waged against the Bene Gesserit’s manipulative influence over everyone’s actions. Just as death can come quick and sudden in the films, Pruwet goes from hanging on every word of Hart’s tales of war to writhing in pain as we see his skin begin to burn. Yes, for what seems to be the first time onscreen in Villeneuve’s Dune universe, a child is murdered…and we see it happen.
This isn’t, strictly speaking, the first time children have been killed in this series, as it’s safe to assume a number of them died when Feyd-Rautha bombed Sietch Tabr, which was inhabited by hundreds of Fremen. However, we never see any of the children’s deaths, nor has any one child been the focus of a killing on screen. In the films, children were seen but rarely ever heard. In Dune: Prophecy, even children can be taken out if it means winning the war.
Why did Desmond Hart kill Pruwet Richese?
To oversimplify the reasoning for this shocking killing, Pruwet was killed by Hart because of his AI-controlled lizard toy. Expanding beyond that isolated incident, Pruwet was murdered because Hart had suspicions that an attack on his regimen and the theft of the Corrino family’s spice shipment were carried out in order to inspire their emperor to bring in the Richese’s fleet for protection, thusly bringing the family closer to the Great Houses through marriage. When Hart shared his report of the attack on the spice operation, which he suspiciously was not made aware of by Kasha, he remarked that equipment used in the attack was from the outside world. That toy, and the convenient marriage proposal from the Richese, was enough for Hart to believe they were behind the attack.
This is also why we see Kasha suffer the same burning fate as Pruwet. Hart has a feeling that the Bene Gesserit are manipulating powerful people like the Corrino emperor for their own ulterior motives. Pruwet’s death effectively dissolves the partnership between the families, removing them from inside of the Corrino family where they can do untold harm.
We still don’t know the true ramifications of Hart’s actions, or how he was able to kill both of these people in the same manner while only being next to one of them. But, if the series premiere is willing to cross a moral line the movies never explicitly touched, we can expect to find out, in graphic detail, just how violent this war can get.